GAIA-X
ACHA is a member of GAIA-X, and is participating in the Health Data Space Vertical.
The Health Data Space is working to build a consortium of public bodies and private companies to promote the use of digital technologies and cloud solutions that will transform the health sector. The Gaia-X secure ecosystem will address some of the problems highlighted by the Covid-19 pandemic, including the absence of interoperability between systems and the prevalence of health data silos.
What is Gaia-X?
A Federated and Secure Data Infrastructure.
Gaia-X strives for innovation through digital sovereignty. Its goal is to establish an ecosystem, whereby data is shared and made available in a trustworthy environment. Its intention is to give the control back to the users by retaining sovereignty over their data.
The outcome will be a federated system linking many cloud service providers and users together in a transparent environment that will drive the European data economy of tomorrow.
The Gaia-X European Association for Data and Cloud AISBL represents the core of the organizational structure. It is an international non-profit association under Belgian law (French: association internationale sans but lucratif, shortened to AISBL). It was founded to develop the technical framework and operate the Gaia-X Federation services.
Officially, the Association was founded by 22 companies and organizations in January 2021. Until today, over 340 members have joined. Its members are committed to upholding the values of data protection, transparency, openness, security, and respect for data rights. They are either companies with a provider or user background of data infrastructures, IT start-ups, research institutions or business associations.
The Association has no business interest of its own. It will develop federation cloud services within the existing cloud infrastructures. To achieve this and to ensure an open and transparent character the Association facilitates the development of an open software infrastructure.
The Gaia-X association brings together industry, politics, government, research, academic, technical and scientific leaders from Europe and beyond to collaborate on the next generation of trusted data infrastructures.
Technology providers, users, large businesses, as well as small and medium businesses have joined the effort to define how they want to maintain control over their data, including who can access it, for what purposes, where it is stored, and by whom it is maintained.
Companies and citizens collect and exchange data, ultimately retaining full control: deciding where to store and what happens with their data.
The Association defines the architecture, policy and rules, labelling, and compliance requirements, fully engaging and representing over 350 members – all taking up specific tasks and truly promoting international cooperation.
For instance, the Gaia-X Hubs act as the voice of user ecosystems on a national level. Their main objectives are to bundle national initiatives, develop ecosystems, and provide a central point of contact to interested parties in their respective countries.